31
THREE DAYS LATER, Iahir awoke to Adalir dragging him out of his bed. He was tied up, both his hands and his feet, and he was gagged. He struggled, but his brother only shrugged down at him in a way that let Iahir know it wasn’t Adalir, it was that Malik person that lived inside his brother.
He was dragged through the hallways, dragged down the stairs, and no one was there.
They really were bleeding servants.
At the bottom of the stairs, he was handed off to someone he recognized.
It was Kinsahad nae Ralhir, the one who had sparred with Gathren in the ring, his friend, a man who he had drunk with and laughed with and been teased by and teased in turn. He was surprised at how much it hurt.
They spoke over him. Kinsahad promised Adalir that they would be given more protection here, that sacrificing his brother meant that the capital would send men to guard Cirlahir.
Wasn’t Malik just so good at trading people for protection?
He supposed that Malik didn’t think people were worth anything. After all, Malik was the part of Adalir who had been left to endure their father treating him like he didn’t matter, like his pain didn’t matter, like he was nothing more than an experiment.
Kinsahad untied his feet and put him on a horse, but he left the gag in. He tied Iahir’s tied hands to the pommel of the horse’s saddle. “There will be a trial, my friend,” he said. “If you’re innocent, you’ll have the chance to speak for yourself.”
But then, when they got back to Renegahan, they paraded him through the streets—not the main streets, he noted, but side streets. He understood, from things that Kinsahad and the others were saying to each other, that the orcs controlled the main streets of town. Elves were not welcome there.
The elves on the side streets threw rotten vegetables at him. They called out that he was a kingkiller and a traitor and that they would see him hung.
So, even if he had been innocent—which he wasn’t—it would not have mattered.
Iahir wondered about getting word to his father. His father might have been able to stop this at some point, but that was when his father had people to command, and his father had nothing now.
They didn’t take him to the castle. Apparently, the orcs had the castle now.
They took him, instead, to the royal dower house, where the queen mother would have stayed if there had been a queen mother. Findas’s mother had been long gone.
He was tossed in the attic, in some old servants’ rooms, and he supposed he should count himself lucky to have a bed, to be fed.
He was there for three days before Kinsahad came in to see him.
Three days had been rather maddening. He had never been so very alone for so long, he had to admit. He had started talking to himself rather sooner than he might have imagined he would. The time had seemed interminable.
When Kinsahad came in, he wanted to weep for the relief of simply having another person there.
“Your father made an attempt to get you out, but it’s been refused,” said Kinsahad. “He was forced to admit your brother is not fit to rule, which has hurt everything. Your whole family is in disgrace, I think. Cirlahir is going to be reassigned.”
“Reassigned by whom?” said Iahir.
Kinsahad shrugged. “Well, the High King, of course.”
“Findas’s son? Gilrihl?”
Kinsahad nodded.
“He came here?” said Iahir, remembering the conversation he’d had before with Marthlis, that Gilrihl would set up court in Cairnil, where he was settled.
“No, he is safe and sound in Cairnil, but we are staying here, for we do not wish to cede the entire city to the orcs,” said Kinsahad.
“Ah,” said Iahir. “Of course.” He paused. “But I heard that there are negotiations going on with the orcs—”
“Oh, yes, those traitors and blackguards under Marthlis,” said Kinsahad. “Larhil is part of it as well, but he’s always been mad with his ideas of extreme equality. Anyway, they are not the government, and neither are the orcs, and—”
“So, how many of the loyalists does Gilrihl have?” said Iahir. “Twenty?”
Kinsahad sighed. “You shouldn’t worry about it, because it’s enough to execute you.”
Iahir supposed that was true enough.
“You could deny it,” said Kinsahad. “I know that orc bitch you had in your bed was there with you. I know that you had her in Cirlahir. So, perhaps, and I don’t know what happened, but perhaps she killed the High King and perhaps you went after her to bring her to justice.
And perhaps your mad brother traded her to the orcs and she got out of our grasp. ”
Iahir’s lips parted.
“You write it out and you sign it,” said Kinsahad.
Iahir swallowed. His voice was raw. “I need to think.”
“Do you? Do you need to think about what the truth is?”
Iahir looked away.
“He was awful,” said Kinsahad. “We all know he was awful. I don’t even blame you in some ways. The orc woman, she’s gone, no matter how soft you were on her. It’s not as if blaming her means anything happens to you, you know. If she was our prisoner, it would be one thing, but she isn’t.”
Yes, but I love her, and using her to save my own neck, it’s particularly ignoble and cowardly. Iahir nodded. “You’re right, of course.”
“Once your name is cleared, perhaps Cirlahir is reassigned to you.”
Iahir nodded again.
“Then,” said Kinsahad, “all is as it should be. Once we drive these orcs off—”
“If we were going to drive them off, wouldn’t that have happened already?” said Iahir.
Kinsahad said nothing.
It was quiet.
Iahir’s mind was racing. If I die, I can’t protect my mother, he thought.
His father would probably protect his mother, but his brother?
Well, who knows what sort of loyalty his brother had.
So, did it not make sense to simply lie, take his place in Cirlahir, and do what he could to keep his family safe?
But Gathren said she would seek me in Cirlahir, he thought.
Of course, when she said it, he was certain they both knew she would not.
That was not going to happen. They were not going to be together, not in several months and not in several years.
On the other hand, if he had condemned her as the killer of the High King, if she did come, he would be obligated to have her executed for the crime, and he could not have that.
“Please tell me you’re not going to die for that orc bitch,” said Kinsahad.
“I need to think,” Iahir growled.
“I liked her, too,” said Kinsahad. “She was a step up from the women you usually take to bed, even if she was only using you to get close to the High King, even if she manipulated you into doing whatever you did. But she certainly isn’t going to mind it if you say she killed Findas.
She would be proud to take the credit, I should think. ”
Well, perhaps there was some truth in that.
And if he died, if he allowed himself to be executed, there was no chance of his doing anything. He could not protect his family. He could never reunite with Gathren. If he died, that was the end.
Iahir did not wish to die.
“How about this?” said Kinsahad. “I’ll leave you with paper and ink. When I come back in half an hour, you’ll have written out that she did it, and you’ll have signed it.” A pause. “Won’t you?”
“Give me a pen,” Iahir grunted.
Kinsahad went out and came back with an inkwell and a sheet of paper. He set them down in front of Iahir on the floor. After all, there was no writing desk in the room.
Iahir sat down and contemplated the blank page.
The door shut as Kinsahad left him alone.
GATHREN WENT DIRECTLY to the castle when she got to Renegahan, but she did not go to see her father.
Instead, she lingered and stayed to the periphery.
No one paid her much mind, and there were orcs everywhere, so she blended in.
The orcs had taken all of it over. They were sleeping in beds at court, dining on the fine plates in the dining halls, dancing in the ball room to music made by orcs on the instruments left by the elves.
She could not deny that something about a scene like that—the triumph of her people after they had been held down for so long, it appealed to her in a fierce and primal way.
She enjoyed watching.
She did not go to find her father though, and she did go back to the army, and she began to wonder if she would. She didn’t have any other options, really, so it was mad to think of simply abandoning it all.
At night, in whatever place she found to curl up—the bedchambers in the castle were all taken over by orcs, so she took blankets into closets, slept in the pantry once—she would take out the letter her brother had written and look it over.
It made her out as the hero of the orc side, risking everything to kill the High King, infiltrating the court, achieving everything for the orc cause.
It might be nice to be this, she thought, but it would be conspicuous. Everyone would look at her if she was the hero her brother purported her to be.
She left the castle sometimes to walk the streets, and this was how it became illustrated to her that the city was divided, that there was an elvish section and an orcish section now. The orcs were not killing anyone anymore, so everyone was existing in some kind of wary truce, she thought.
One day, she got distracted by someone being dragged through the side streets in the elvish part of town, because the elves were making quite a racket about it, stomping their feet and yelling out wild cries. When she understood that they were yelling, “Kingkiller,” she stopped to watch.
She could not believe it.
Could she not leave this man alone for any time at all before his own people were trying to kill him?
How many times had she saved his life now?
Iahir was tied and gagged on the back of a horse, his expression blank and unseeing as he was paraded through the streets. The elves threw things at him. They yelled about how they would watch him twitch at the end of a rope.